Cryptid

 

 

 

source

Cryptid

Was it your lover

you saw in the dream,

a spirit bear on fire,

or perhaps

the chupacabra, a steam

 given off/

absorbed  by

too-hot night?

Some cryptid regardless,

a cambion that comes

when eyelids fall down

before the stare of stars

dropped silent with a burn

from black sky

as morning turns to face you

cobra-hooded.

Fragments of him

of you

litter the lawn.

Meteorite dust

hangs in the air;

the smell of old longings

seeps from the roses

powdery as the skin's

 memory of a hand

that still feels,

of lips that know words

are the dark subsidence

down which you will tumble

to the place of live shadows

where two become one.

~September 2014

  

reposted for desperate poets

Top Image: Untitled by Abode of Chaos on Flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

The Briar Maid

 

 

 

 

 

 The Briar Maid

 

When I slip off this

rumpled dress and slide

down the gullet of time;

when I go, and it won't be long

no matter how long;

I want what they take

from the oven to lie

at the tangleroot feet of

the Briar Maid.

 

She is faceless, fierce, ever

green as her puncture-vine cloak

drawing blood at the touch;

though I pull her strangling hands

from oak and hackberry,

with her thorns she circles sanctuary.

Whatever is left that lives knows

she marks the line

past which Time may not go.

She stands guard, 

through cyclone wind,

drought, wildfire and freeze,

for grey squirrels' trees,

for greybrown birds 

fed fat on sunflower, blackberry

acorn and mulberry,for

peanut thieves, my blue bickering jays

and black satin crows;

 

box turtle and

blister-beetle know,

roving armadillo, red-tail hawk, butterfly

in his last piece of sky, prairie

grass and the snakes that swim it,

rat and king, garden, garter

and copper-headed,

each thing secure in its

small life to come and go.

 

 

All that really matters of her

holds safe underground

as will I, ash-soul in place,

faceless, fierce

to feed and to become 

with her in season

ward and warden of that space

that was my land, that was my heart,

that is the last try

for all that's been loved

too hard, too long,

too strong

to die.

October 2022

posted for earthweal's

Poetry of Becoming

For those who want to know her better, my original 2013 poem about The Briar Girl is here.

 

 

 

 

 

Photos © joyannjones